Brynn Tix, at the age of forty years, centaur on the brink of adolescence. His life up until this point consisted mostly of playing with his brothers, and learning the basic life skills that any productive tribe member needs.
He didn't get to see much of his sister; centaur boys didn't see much of females in general. The women were highly prized and were given intensive lessons in the arts, calling on the spirits of nature, and leadership from a young age. Some of the girls will end up moving to other tribes to attain positions of power that opened up; with the rarity of female births, it was not unusual for a tribe to see no female births in decades. Fortunately, Tix's tribe was one of the largest tribes, and had some very fertile lines in it, so his sister Shara had two companions in her lessons.
Tix was playing with his brother Voq at the edge of the woods. Voq had always had a fertile imagination, and so came up with the best games to play. Right now, they were pretending that a particularly large rock was a foaling mother, and they had to defend it from the advancing wolves. They would throw pebbles into the undergrowth and kick at the plants, then run back to the rock giggling to themselves.
Normally, their proximity to the tribe and the amount of noise they were making scared all the nearby animals away - or, at the very least, they gave the annoying centaurs a wide berth. But this time, the noise had served to attract an animal. And it wasn't just any animal, either.
It was a tiger.
***
"Voq! Look out! There's a giant spider!" Tix yelled, grinning as he gave a mighty kick to a leaf that was slowly falling to the ground.
"Thanks, Tix!" Voq said, grinning as he threw a rock at a target that had been painted onto a tree for use in archery practise.
The boys giggled as they played, oblivious to the tiger that was stalking them.
The tiger was a large and powerful one that had just had the misfortune of being kicked out of his territory by an even larger, more powerful tiger. As a result, he was forced to hunt closer to the centaurs than usual. But it seemed that it wasn't exactly a misfortune for him; after all, his new hunting ground was already bearing fruit.
Like a coiled spring, the tiger pounced on the unaware centaurs, scarcely making a sound.
He caught the quivering young centaur in his claws, and scratched at his rump. Tix looked on in horror as he saw his brother's haunches begin to bleed beneath the monstrous creature's grasp.
Tix, pale at the sight of blood, bolted as quickly as he could, in the direction of his home. He could hear Voq screaming and stamping as the tiger clawed at him, but as he got further away these sounds faded.
Fortunately, their mother, Brynn Nersha, had been performing a ritual not far away, and she heard Voq's cries for help.
She galloped towards the tiger, and gave it a decisive kick in the head. It hissed at her, baring its fangs. She held onto her totem - an orc's tooth on a leather cord around her neck - and focused on communicating with the tiger, telling it to leave them alone.
The pair stared one another down for a good long while, until the tiger begrudgingly made its way off. Nersha immediately applied a healing salve to her unfortunate son's bloodied body, and lifted his quivering, sobbing equine body onto her back.
"Shh, Voq. You're going to be alright."
And so the mother carried her child into the tribe land, taking him to a soft pile of moss and leaves that served as a sort of sylvan infirmary. Immediately, the entire tribe was abuzz with centaurs wanting to help their matriarch's son.
And from the edge of the concerned crowd, Tix was watching it, left only with the memory of his brother being savaged by a vicious beast and, worse still, of how his cowardice prevented him from helping.
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